Harry Basilisk
by Lucillia
Summary: Thanks to a healing gone wrong in the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter is now a Basilisk. Able to turn into a "Human Harry shaped" Basilisk from sunrise to sunset, he tries to keep this a secret. How long until his secret gets out and the panic begins?
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Someone in the CaerAzkaban group started a "Harry as a Basilisk" challenge, and I decided to try and take him up on it. The rules are: Following the events in the Chamber of Secrets Harry becomes a Basilisk. The transformation is Essential in nature. He is not a Basilisk animagus, but a Basilisk through and through. Harry finds a way to disguise himself as his old human self for a few hours each day. He should try to keep his transformation a secret from his family as well as the students and faculty of Hogwarts.

Now on with the story:

&!&!&!&

My room's too small. Not too small as in "I can't fit my furniture and belongings inside" but, too small as in "If I lift my head another inch I'm going to scrape it on the ceiling". It used to be large enough for me to move around in, but that is no longer the case. The reason why is because when I could fit inside my room without too much trouble I was a human boy, and now I'm not. I am currently a sixty foot long and three foot in diameter acid green specimen of a species of magical snake that is commonly called a Basilisk which is stuck in an eight foot by ten foot by seven foot room that is half filled with furniture I no longer need.

How did I get in this situation, you ask?

It's sorta a long story, but to make a long story short, it was Voldemort's fault. If his younger self hadn't opened the Chamber of Secrets and set that damn snake on me I wouldn't be in this mess.

If it hadn't been for Fawkes though, I wouldn't be a Basilisk. On the other hand if it weren't for Fawkes, I'd be one of a pair or even a quartet of corpses laying there rotting in the Chamber of Secrets. I don't really blame Fawkes for my current situation or the irritation I go through every morning and evening, he had been trying to help me. How was he supposed to know that because the only thing that could survive Basilisk venom is a Basilisk, his tears would turn me into one as they attempted to heal me from the bite I received from Slytherin's Monster as I shoved Gryffindor's sword into its brain via its mouth, he's just a bird after all not a Healer, and he wouldn't have had to help me in the first place if it weren't for that bastard Tom Riddle.

Fawkes is a pretty stand-up guy for a Phoenix. Instead of just ditching me after I turned into a sixty foot monster, he actually tried to correct the situation. The end result of that attempt at correction is the burning. Every morning at dawn I go from being Harry Potter the freaking huge snake to being a Harry Potter shaped Basilisk - basically I look like the boy I once was, except for the fact that I'm cold blooded, don't need to eat more than once a week, need to wear mirrored sunglasses until the contacts that are on special order arrive, and have strange cravings for small rodents and other animals - and every evening at sunset I turn back again.

Here comes the sun now, and with it the insanely itchy burning that always starts at the end of my tail and travels to my head like a lighted fuse. I endure the irritation, glad that it is an itch rather than the extreme agony one should feel as one is lit on fire and burned for several minutes. I must remember to thank whoever the hell it was who put a fire proofing ward on the property otherwise the house would have burned down on the first day of vacation and revealed my secret to the world. I must also remember to thank Ginny for agreeing to keep my secret, oh and Madam Pompfrey who claimed that such things were included in her confidentiality oath when she sent out the order for the contacts in both Harry and Giant Basilisk sizes, leading me to believe that something similar to my situation may have occurred in the past.

The burning is done, the sun is risen, and Aunt Petunia's calling like she does every morning. Coming to my door with her endless list of chores no doubt. The only thing I have to look forward to today and for the rest of the Summer is the yard work. If I plan things right, I'll have some time to bask before the over-sized fat filled snacks come to bother me before dragging me indoors for the housework. I really don't know how I'm going to manage in that drafty castle this coming Winter. It's not like I'll be able to hibernate, and there's the fact that if I can't fit inside my room here, there'll be no way in hell I'll be able to fit on my bed there.

I'll have to worry about that later though. For now however, it'll be boring chores and then sun, sun, sun.


	2. Chapter 2

I honestly didn't know how the hell I managed to hide the fact that I turn into a sixty foot snake at sunset from my relatives for over a month even with them mostly ignoring me except for handing me chore lists and Dudley picking on me while I was doing said chores, but I did. Every night, I had expected Uncle Vernon to come barreling into my room yelling at me to be quiet every time I whacked my head on the ceiling considering how loudly I swore, but he always failed to do so. Every morning, I half feared that Aunt Petunia would open the door just a little too early, but she never did. And so, despite my constant fears of discovery, my secret remained just that. At least until Aunt Marge arrived.

How it didn't turn into a complete disaster worse than the Dobby fiasco I'll never know.

Aunt Marge was the least favorite of my relatives, as each one of the few visits she made when she could spare the time from breeding her godawful dogs and writing trashy romance novels that were constantly being rejected by every publisher in existence stood out in my memory as being the absolute worst times in my life. The dog biscuits for Christmas were par for the course, but being whacked so hard with a stick that my knee was nearly broken because she didn't want me to beat Dudley at musical statues was above and beyond, as well as leaving me in a tree until well after midnight because Dudley had tripped me and I landed on her dog Ripper who retaliated by chasing me up said tree. Not even Uncle Vernon would go as far as she did when making comments about me or my parents. Learning that she was going to stop by for a week had been absolutely the worst birthday present my Aunt and Uncle could have given me. That was probably why that fatass Vernon was smiling when he informed me that he was going to pick up his sister from the train station.

I had to race to finish the dinner dishes by sunset on the first night of Marge's visit, as Marge tended to enjoy a rather leisurely meal, during which she ate enough food to stuff a small elephant. As I cleaned the dishes, Marge raided the fridge and made disparaging remarks about my current appearance, my ancestry and my likely criminal history. I managed to tune her out by focusing on the task at hand. I raced to my room the instant the last dish was dry. Marge followed, apparently not finished with insulting me and my ancestors.

Despite the fact that sunset was nearly nine o'clock at night, I barely made it back to my room in time. One interesting fact about my bedroom is that despite the fact that there are several locks on the door, I cannot lock it from the inside. It is this lack of privacy that had caused my secret to be revealed to the rest of the family. Fortunately for my continued existence and the continued existence of my relatives, I somehow managed to keep my eyes shut that evening.

I had just removed my sunglasses - which had received many negative comments from my relatives - and taken a seat on the floor in preparation for the burning when Marge slammed my bedroom door open to continue her harangue. Fortunately for Marge's continued survival, I had become so accustomed to loud banging noises over the years that I didn't even flinch, much less instinctively turn to see what the source of the noise was like many of my classmates are wont to do, and continued looking out the window instead, searching for something to focus on so I could tune the old bitch out. I chose a tree, seeing as plants oddly failed to die when I looked at them, and I didn't want to risk petrifying one of the neighbors. Asking Marge to leave would be pointless, as that would only serve to egg her on. Instead I silently prayed that she would shut up and go away before the itching in my feet turned to flames.

No such luck. The woman watched the entire burning. First she started yelling at me for setting myself on fire - attracting the attention of the rest of my relatives - then, upon seeing me turn into a giant snake she became oddly silent. Once the process was finished, she turned to Aunt Petunia and asked what planet my father was from. When Aunt Petunia replied that she didn't know, Marge walked over to the guest room and shut the door.

About five minutes into the long silence that followed Marge's departure, I heard the clicking of typewriter keys punctuated by the ding that indicated that the end of a line been reached.

After I was starting to think that I might have somehow petrified my relatives despite having shut my eyes shortly after the start of the burning, Aunt Petunia sighed and shut the door, apparently having had her fill of staring at me.

"You see Vernon," Aunt Petunia said once the door was securely locked. "This is why I didn't want him going to that school."

And with that, the people I most expected to freak out spectacularly failed to do so.

Apparently Aunt Petunia had been half expecting that something like this would happen to me since - as I learned the next morning during the discussion about how I became an enormous snake - my mother had spent half of the summer after her third year in St. Mungo's recovering from a potions mishap that made Hermione's polyjuice accident look positively cute, and one of my mother's best friends had spent the first couple weeks of the summer after their fourth year as some sort of giant gerbil thing. She had been waiting for the letter informing her that I'd been involved in some sort of magical disaster for the last two years.

Marge, who was apparently somewhat insane and a Sci-Fi fanatic - everything from Star Trek to Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and absolutely devoted to Dr. Who [having once committed the cardinal sin of actually changing the channel while Dudley was watching t.v. to catch an episode] - had immediately decided that I was some sort of half-alien weresnake, and that my transformations had something to do with puberty. The fact that she had once attempted to do a background check on my father to get better material for her rants and came up with nothing became proof of this in her mind. She spent the rest of the week either typing away - having been inspired by the sight of me rather than completely freaked out like a "normal' person would be - or asking me questions I didn't know the answers to. I eventually started making stuff up so she would leave me alone, seeing as I knew nearly zilch about my biology, anatomy, and family history.

Uncle Vernon had decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and rather than yell at me about my "freakishness" had gone back to completely ignoring me. Once the week was over and Marge left carrying her bag and a surprisingly well behaved - more like constantly cowering in a corner whining - Ripper's leash in one hand and a sheaf of typewritten papers in the other, he surprisingly honored our bargain and signed the Hogsmeade permission form. The fact that I could turn into a bloody huge snake and eat him while he slept probably had something to do with it.

Dudley all but vanished, staying away from the house all day, eating very little at mealtimes and avoiding snacks altogether for some strange reason. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I accidentally referred to him as a fat-filled snack when he decided to block my sunlight while I was doing yardwork one afternoon...


	3. Interlude: Padfoot and Moony

Author's Note: I tried to keep within the parameters of the challenge, - Harry did in fact try to keep the secret from his family, and failed - but there is no way in hell that Harry would be able to keep the fact he is a Basilisk from either Sirius or Remus. Padfoot's nose would spot it in an instant, and Moony would quickly notice something was off as well. I had Sirius rationalize the transformation though, believing that it is a botched Animagus transformation.

&!&!&!&

Nothing could fool Padfoot's nose, so when I went to see my Godson who was working in the front yard of the rather boring looking house that could only belong to Lily's sister what'sherface and smelled something that sent me running for the hills before I could even think, I was naturally curious. Being curious, I went back to investigate and nearly got killed for my troubles. You'd think I would have learned not to go peeking into people's windows long ago.

Seeing my poor Godson turn into a massive Basilisk whose scent overwhelmed his own was quite the experience. I was frozen in terror, not sure whether to run or pass out. Screaming was high on the list of things to do, but my vocal chords found that they weren't quite up to the task, letting out a rather unmanly squeak instead. I think it was pure luck that I didn't end up looking into his eyes or that he didn't notice me.

Little Harry is James' son through and through, though he apparently has Lily's brains. Unfortunately, it seems he wasn't born with either Lily's common sense or Prongs' sense of self-preservation. Even James wasn't stupid enough to try anything as insanely harebrained as what little Harry attempted to pull off.

It's a pity he tried for the form of his Magical Protector rather than his Animagus form after his vision quest and seriously botched the Animagus transformation. There's a really big reason why there are severe warnings about differentiating between one's Magical Patron Animal and one's Animagus form before attempting any transformation in every text on the subject, as both will appear during the vision quest. Attempting to turn into one's Protector tends to have severe consequences. I've heard that being stuck in a Permanent Transformative Loop Cycle is hell. Fortunately, his seems tied to the sun rather than something more arbitrary, like the poor sod who ended up turning into an Augrey ten minutes out of every hour between the hours of 6am and 10pm.

After trying to show up and say "Hi" as Padfoot a couple of times and running for it before I got within ten feet of my poor Godson, I gave up and headed North. I have a job to do. I have to get the traitor at Hogwarts before he hurts anyone else. I have to kill him for betraying James. That is if Harry doesn't accidentally eat him first.

&!&!&

I cower in the Weasley boy's pocket. All fear of what Padfoot will do to me if he catches up to me has fled my mind in the presence of a more immediate danger. Harry used to smell of James, Lily, what he ate, the little scents that transferred from everyone and everything that almost nobody picks up on, and the wind. Now, Harry smells of snake. Massive snake. Massive, dangerous, and very poisonous snake. It drowns out every other smell that tries to attach itself to the boy I'd never been able to bring myself to lay a hand on despite what he did to my life when he destroyed my master.

It had never been my life's ambition to live my days as someone's pet. Now however, if being Ronald Weasley's pet will keep me alive should Harry's new instincts and hungers awaken, I shall cleave myself to his side for all eternity.

&!&!&!&

Usually nothing short of a Death Eater attack could wake me on the day after the full moon, but today - as I was dreaming of a tearful reunion between myself and my little cub where I told him I was sorry that I couldn't be near him while he was growing up because of the restraining order that the Ministry had rather graciously altered this year so I could come near him while executing my duties as a teacher - something sent Moony howling at me to run for it. I barely registered the four children I shot past while racing from the compartment in unthinking terror, completely forgetting my luggage. It was only when I stopped to think that I realized that one of them was Harry.

Reading a notice from Gringotts that the Potter Heir suffered from a variant of Lady Magwhite's Disorder and would possibly soon be involved in some rather expensive legal matters if past cases were any indication and that as manager of the Potter Estate I should prepare for said expenses, and smelling it for myself are two completely different things. The form that arrived along with another request from the Dursleys for more money for Harry's upkeep despite the fact that the boy was now gone for most of the year, had brought with it a sense of shock, but it was nothing compared to this feeling of blind terror as Moony howled that the boy whose diapers I'd changed when he was a baby, and whose money I'd looked after for nearly twelve years without spending a single knut on myself was DANGEROUS! The fear that sent us scurrying without a backward glance overwhelmed the painful feeling of failure that had been gnawing away at me all summer.

In order for someone to suffer from Lady Magwhite's disorder, they would have had to have reached those golden moments of death where it was just barely possible that the quick work of a healer might bring them back into the world of the living. The mixing of the blood of the animal into which the victim turns with that of the victim him or herself would not occur in such a manner otherwise.

Steeling myself against Moony's desire to be away! Away! AWAY!, I turned back to the compartment to apologize to the child I'd have raised if I hadn't been a Werewolf.


	4. Chapter 3

It was as the clouds took over and the sky got darker as the Hogwarts Express wended its way Northward that I realized something, something that I should have considered before. Every time the Hogwarts Express had pulled into Hogsmeade at the start of the year, it had been after sunset. As the sun sank lower in the sky, I began to worry. Ron and Hermione didn't know about my condition. It had been kept from just about everybody that didn't need to be in the know, so as to prevent unnecessary panic.

How would I be able to hide my condition from friend and foe alike, and prevent a panic on the train when I transformed? How could I have been so stupid as to not even consider this until the journey to Hogwarts was half over?

I had been informed before that if I sent an owl explaining why I couldn't get on the Hogwarts Express, someone would come and pick me up. Hedwig was at Hogwarts to prevent any accidents, but didn't mean that I had no way of mailing someone, as I could have used one of the post owls in Diagon Alley even if I had to buy the damn thing. I had more than enough gold to buy a hundred such creatures in my vault.

The mysterious R. J. Lupin who was to become my Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor came to my rescue, and for that I will be eternally grateful despite whatever he tries to do to me at the end of the year. It had been him who had ushered my friends out of the compartment as the itching in my feet began, him who had put blinds on all of the windows, and him who had locked the compartment door to prevent unwanted visitors.

The compartment unfortunately was much smaller than my bedroom, and I was pinched and squeezed in the most uncomfortable places by the seats that the mysterious R. J. Lupin had failed to remove.

For a long while, I listened to the rain pounding against the windows as I tried not to focus on how incredibly uncomfortable I was. Eventually, the train slowed to a stop, but it was sooner than normal based on my vague recollections of previous trips. I could hear some screaming in the corridors outside, and prayed it wasn't because word of my condition had gotten out to the rest of the student body.

Suddenly, the temperature in my compartment dropped rapidly, making me incredibly sluggish and slowing my thoughts to a crawl. The chill increased as something tried to make its way into my compartment, and I thought I could hear a yell of "Take Harry and run!". Eventually, the would-be intruder's attempts at breaking into my compartment were successful, and the would-be intruder became an intruder in actuality.

Rather stupidly I forgot what I was for a moment and turned my head to see who or what it was that had entered, or rather tried to enter and bounced off my side. I only caught a vague glimpse of a black cloak and an incredibly diseased looking hand before the thing before me fell to the floor either dead or petrified, and the chill that had been sapping all of my energy vanished.

The mysterious R. J. Lupin arrived moments later, carefully keeping his eyes closed as he dragged off the body of whatever the hell that was, set a bar of chocolate on me, told me to eat it, and relocked my compartment as he left.

I can now state with absolute certainty that to a snake, chocolate tastes like crap.

Eventually, the train got started again, and after a while we pulled in at the station and the students began to disembark. I could hear Hagrid's familiar cry of "Firs' years! Firs' years! Over here!". My friends returned to the outside of my compartment, hoping to leave with me but eventually left empty handed when the mysterious R. J. Lupin who had been standing guard since he'd disposed of that cloaked thing had informed them that I wasn't feeling too well and had to be brought to the infirmary.

After every last student was off the train and presumably safe inside the castle, my compartment door was unlocked, revealing that Madam Pompfrey was there to guide me to what would be my new living quarters this year.

I carefully disembarked, and relished the ability to stretch myself as the small group that consisted of myself, Madam Pompfrey, and Professor Lupin made our way across the grounds and to the castle. When we entered the castle, I could hear the roar of the students in the Great Hall.

Snake hearing isn't exactly like human hearing, fortunately there is some sort of magic that allows my brain to process the vibrations I receive and translate them into something intelligible, such as human voices, people walking, and whatnot. I am thankful it is there, otherwise I'd have been forced to pretend that the ordeal that I went through in the Chamber of Secrets had left me completely deaf, until I figured out a way to adapt.

We made our way upstairs and eventually stopped at the abandoned third floor Charm's corridor from my first year. One of the larger abandoned lecture halls from - as Hermione had informed me before - Hogwarts' golden age when they were experimenting with turning part of the school which itself had practically been a village back then into a college in order to replace the traditional Master/Apprentice program with something more modern had been converted into a giant terrarium.

It was perfect.


End file.
